geralt / Pixabay

 

Millions of people have seen Google’s Gemini ad that has run during the Olympics (if you haven’t seen it, I’ve embedded it below).

In it, a parent asks AI to write a letter for his little girl to her track idol.

I think this is a terrible way to use AI!  In fact, it’s so terrible that I’ll be incorporating the ad into my week-long unit on AI in my Theory of Knowledge class this year (see A NEW WAY I’M INTRODUCING MY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE UNIT TO STUDENTS – WITH HANDOUT).

If students are going to use AI, we want them to use it to enhance their own voice, not use AI’s voice (see HERE’S THE AI GUIDANCE I’M GIVING TO MY TOK STUDENTS THIS YEAR.).

As you can see in the guidance I give, students need to do the primary writing and, then, if they choose to use AI, use specific prompts to help them make it better.

Interestingly, the few students who used AI last year and submitted both versions (theirs and the AI-enhanced one) were as surprised as I was how much worse the AI versions were than their non-AI assisted ones.

So, at this point, I’m not sure it’s possible for AI to truly enhance an essay apart from finding punctuation and spelling errors.  Nevertheless, students seem to get the importance of the idea of using it to enhance their voice instead of the other way around, and can often see when it usually is not successful in doing that.

This Google ad would be good to demonstrate that point.

By the way, the other new addition to my AI unit will be talking about the affect of AI on climate change.

I’m adding this post to My Best Posts On Artificial Intelligence In The Classroom, and you might also be interested in a zillion “Best” lists I have on AI in education.